Family History News and Views from Lisa Louise Cooke, host of The Genealogy Gems Podcast at www.GenealogyGems.com

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

How My Mom Prepared Me For the Geneablogger Summit

9 Genealogy Bloggers descended upon the Southern California Genealogical Jamboree this year in the form of a Geneablogger Summit

The summit, sponsored by Thomas MacEntee of Geneablogger fame, was a follow up to last years event and was aptly named "Son of Blogger."

I walked in to the banquet room about 15 minutes prior to the start time and immediately cringed as I realized I was the last panelist to arrive. (I had carefully budgeted my time between the Family Tree Magazine booth and the various events)

Dick Eastman rushed up to me and whispered "oh good! I'm not alone!" And I first I thought he meant that he, too, had just arrived. But soon he showed me his empty hands and confided it hadn't occurred to him to bring his laptop.

Laptop? What laptop? Who said we needed to bring a laptop? My mother taught me it was impolite to talk on the phone or type on a computer while talking to someone, so I certainly assumed that applied to being part of a presentation as well! (Turns out my mother is old school!)

Above: Dick and I laptopless while Shelley blogs

A quick rummage through my purse revealed my trusty digital voice recorder which I promptly whipped out on to the table before us and cleverly held up during my introduction saying that it was my blogging / podcasting weapon of choice. I like to think everyone thought it was planned.

We then we proceeded to spend one hour and five minutes introducing ourselves. No, that's not a typo - 1 hour and 5 minutes! Note to selves: "they invited us because they know who we are - cut intros short!"

During my intro moderator George Morgan showed my "Socks to America" video. I published it on YouTube about 2 years ago before Genealogists took over Facebook, so while it got a lot of views, it didn't get "Facebook shared" as it might today. It was fun to see a fresh response to one of my fave projects. My motto: Genealogy should be fun!"

But the most interesting folks were these (photo right): The Audience! Check out the adorable laughing gal in the front row! That's my kind of gal. These folks asked great questions and were feverishly taking notes on how to blog.

I trust that next year we'll see an expansion of genealogy blogging at Jamboree - perhaps with a How To Intro Class, followed up by an "Ask the Experts" type panel summit. Knowing the Jamboree's leadership, I have no doubt that genealogy blogging will only get bigger and better at future conferences.